Tag: empathy

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Blogolicious Jan 2021 (life in the time of covid-19 and extremism)

So, yeah. the world has gone crazy again. I deactivated my Facebook account, again. (Once again I feel like a stranger in a strange land, like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.) All those around me are crying “Havoc!” and letting loose the dogs of war.

As I see NBA players kneeling (now more fully understanding why they do this than I ever used to) and then read the vitriolic responses of the far right, I laugh, a mirthless chuckle. The extreme right does not care to understand, does not dare to open their hearts or minds to new thoughts or information. They don’t care about compassion and understanding but they do care if anyone rubs up against their narrow POV.

If a person hides themselves away refusing to look, read, learn, know anything outside of what they have always known, they will become more and more extremist. Any time you block yourself off from wisdom or knowledge or facts, and insist on only following a finite set of information, you set yourself up for cult-like extremist behavior. It’s bound to happen. History always repeats itself. Because the lessons that should have been learned have not been learned, not at all. When you know you’re right all the time and throw in a little religious fervor, look out. And some of them don’t even need the religion, they just need a cause to launch themselves behind, no matter how hateful it is.

Let’s say the number 5000 represented all the knowledge and wisdom and factual information available to us humans today. Some people will stop at 10. Some at twenty. Some at 4000. They will stop and say “I know it all! I know everything I need to know! Don’t talk to me about anything outside of this!” and “If you believe anything outside of THIS, not only are you wrong, but you’re stupid and evil, too.”

SMDH. Humans are so funny, but not in a laughable way, not today.

I’ve had enough of extremist view points. POVs that leave out compassion, talking with and discussing things calmly and logically with others, that refuse ever ever to (heaven forbid) listen to someone else’s POV. I see it every day. If you start to say something new to them, you can see the wall clang down as their minds and hearts close off. They have already made up their minds about everything til the end of time. They require no new information. It’s fear. It’s lack of maturity. It’s close-mindedness in the extreme.

There are some who follow me who are from a more, shall we say, conservative mindset. That’s fine. I get it. I’ve come out of some of that background myself. But many of you, even family members, do not know me, haven’t been around me for many years. I got to thinking that I know them quite well because they are the same in many ways as they have always been. But they do NOT know me. If you haven’t been around me in twenty years, I guarantee you do not know me. I’ve changed and grown a ton and been through a lot. I feel as though the universe itself said “I will bang your stubborn head on a brick wall until you open your mind and listen.” (The Universe apparently not being content to just let me be.)

Maybe it needs free thinkers, open-minded folks who are teachable enough and open-minded enough to grow along with all the changes that have occurred this century. Maybe people with open minds and hearts are in short supply so I was selected, I don’t know. I only know that I am a product of my experiences, (like most) though some seem to willingly shut themselves off from new experiences.

I’ve lived in a cave (metaphorically speaking) locked away from anything other than One POV, and there is certainly comfort in it. Soft, cozy. Warm.

The real world can be cold and harsh, but out there is where the fighting is, the true struggle. The struggle to be the best YOU you can become. This does not happen without ever having everything you believe in shaken and rattled, questioned, butted about, without something forcing you to face it all. (A new motto of mine is Question Everything, and that is so different than who I used to be.)

If you are someone who cares, I’ll share a bit about myself here (and goodness knows there are tons of blog posts here you can go back over, if you care to know me better, truly. Not just think you know me.)

I am not a Democrat or a Republican (I’m a registered Independent.) For the most part I do support police and military, first-responders, etc. I come from a military family and I will always support those who defend us with their lives. There have been times when certain officers have crossed a line and gone over to the bad place, and if you are a person of color, you know this. It breaks my heart.

Those on the far right might find themselves wanting to call me a snowflake liberal. Whatevs. If it helps you sleep better to put me in that box, by all means. Snowflakes are unique individuals, beautiful. I’ll take it. I DO care about people, I am a softy, no doubt. I love all people, want to see all people cared for and loved and supported, protected, and fed. If having a big heart and Big Love makes me a liberal, then call me that.

I am a writer with a fierce imagination. If I was a youngster in this day and age, they’d likely medicate me for my active mind and imagination. It’s a plate of spaghetti up there, I kid you not. I am ALWAYS thinking (which feeds into me not being able to sleep without some kind of sleep aid.)

I’m smart, but I’m a fish so don’t ask me to climb a tree. Don’t ask me about geometry but I am fascinated with physics and want to learn more. My “no likey maths” brain struggles with some of these things. I am certainly more of a right-brainer than a left-brainer (more creative, less mathy) but I am intelligent. I have an eye for color and design. I am highly organized at times, but can be more loosey-goosey when it comes to art. I have become a person who questions everything. I do have conspiracy theories but they may be different than most people’s.

Though most of my life people have treated me like a dumb blond, I’m actually a brunette. I’ve been underestimated and patted on the head hundreds of times, maybe thousands. But I am a woman, so there ya go. This is how they treat us.

On the whole, I am against abortion, however, I know people who have had them, I’ve sat with them and heard their stories and I don’t judge. Rape, incest, other real life problems factor in. For people who have never experienced crisis in their life, it’s easy to judge. I don’t do it. Also, the government shouldn’t be allowed to tell me what to do with my body.

White privilege is real. I never really understood it before I began to meet and know people from all walks of life, began to read about and hear their stories. Privilege is real. If you are not a person of color you cannot begin to imagine what life is like for one (neither can I). Many do not have the capacity to have empathy for anyone different from themselves. The color of your skin is an accident of birth, you had no choice in it. You’d better believe it.

I never ever look down my nose at the homeless, knowing that many of them had homes and families and so-called normal lives once, and then crisis hit and knocked them for a loop. It is not for me or for you to judge. (“There but for the grace of God,” etc., etc.) If someone told you once 20 years ago that they are all drunks and druggies and to be despised, time to re-think. Heaven forbid it should happen to you. Sometimes we learn lessons in the hardest of ways.

I believe firmly that this right-wing extremism thing is caused by people shutting themselves off from reality. They grow only so far, and then no more, refusing any and all new information. They read only one kind of book, watch only one station, surround themselves with people who are much the same as them. It’s cultish and dangerous, I’ve learned that well.

Now you know more about me. I am all heart, and that heart is broken these days. It is all just too, too much. I never thought I’d live to see such times.

It’s easy to just follow, to go along with what everyone else is doing, it really is. It’s hard to stop and say, “No more. I will think for myself. I will gather information and decide for myself.” It’s so hard, and at times very lonely. But for the first time ever, these last few years have taught me exactly who I am. I know exactly what I believe. (I know way less than I ever did in some senses… I no longer feel I know everything, that’s for sure. I am uncertain about a lot and that’s okay and as it should be. But I remain in a state of continued seeking, learning, and growing.) My mind and heart is open (if skeptical.)

I don’t know why I’m here, and I don’t want any more pat answers. But I am here and I am a writer, and so I will continue to do what I do as long as I can.

I love you, people. I really, really do. I hope you all, we all, remember our love and compassion, especially in such times.

Peace Out!

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True, Big Love

I just saw a true portrayal of love… it was a show about a woman who’s nine-year-old son had been murdered by a very broken, distraught teenager. Towards the end of the show, she is confronting the killer (many years later). He’s telling the mother what happened, crying, apologizing, and another man, a friend of the mother’s, shows up with a knife and starts towards the killer. He intends to take his life. The mother steps in front of the killer, the one who had killed her son. She steps up, steps in. 

She knows he deserves it, has it coming, but she still stands between the man with the knife and the one who killed her son.

It kinda broke me.

What a portrait of love, big love, forgiveness, sacrifice. She was willing to take the knife into her own body for the guilty one. So very Christ-like, so very full of true, actual love.

Though I am not much into religion in an organized way these days, I do very strongly believe in the principles of love, forgiveness, sacrifice. I believe in big love, all encompassing love. The kind of love that says, “No more. Enough is enough.”

In a time when compassion and empathy can literally save the lives of our fellow humans, (but many can’t be bothered to care), it is a powerful and compelling story.

This is the kind of love I seek to always have. Sacrificial, big love that says, it’s not just about me.

Something to ponder.

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The Concept of Absolute Truth (a philosophical post)

This is my swirly thoughts about the concept of absolute truth. (I’ve not taken classes on this, it is based on my own thoughts, reading, observations over a lifetime, and, let’s face it, any philosophy is based on the individual’s experiences.)

A hundred years ago, think about what the world was like. Or two thousand years ago, or 500.

A person grows up in a family, in a community, in a particular area of the world, and that family and community teaches you throughout your life, a set of “truths” that are widely held (in your area, in your time in history, in your community or family) as absolute. Black and white. This is this and that is that. It’s just the way it is.

Consider someone who has grown up in a totally different area of the world than you, in a different point in history, a different family, a different environment entirely. They also were taught “This is truth” or “that is truth”. 

Do you think for a minute that these two groups of thoughts and beliefs are the same? Absolutely they will not be. You will find things that other “groups” believe in that are the same, ideas such as, family is important, this is how we seek God, this is how we treat people. Then there will be big differences. One person’s truth, that grew up in India in 1965 let’s say, is going to be very different than the person who grew up in 100 BC or 1978 or 2009. Because their environments, their families and traditions, all that their cultures held dear, has formed each one’s view of “truth.”

For me, I can only believe that “Absolute Truth” only encompasses the largest of broad things such as “the earth is round.” Realizing that for a long time, people everywhere believed it to be absolute truth that the earth is flat.

Most everyone NOW accepts that indeed, the earth is round. Most people agree that UP is UP and DOWN is DOWN. Gravity is real. Certain things we pretty much all agree on.

But the thirty-year old African American woman who grew up a world away from you and I, or the European child, coming into her teens, having been brought up in a totally different community, family, and environment, one must accept that the things they have been taught and likely will be taught to be absolute truth, will be different. Because what we believe is intricately and inescapably drawn from a combination of our backgrounds, where we were born, where and how we were raised, what we were taught to believe as a child and what we have learned for ourselves, out of our experiences and “learning” to be true for us.

So, we can conclude that the young men who were alive in 100 or 50 BC are going to have a completely and totally different view of many things than the woman in a remote tribe somewhere in the year 2000, or different than what you or I believe.

Today, in 2020, there are people all over the world and even my own city, that will argue with you until they turn blue and die about what truth is.

Truth has always only ever been, and only ever will be, a perspective arrived at based on where you grew up, when you grew up, what you were taught to believe, and your own experiences.

Outside of those things we (maybe to a huge degree) can agree certain things are true, such as oxygen is needed to live. The sky is blue. Obvious things, I would call them.

So when people talk about absolute truth, I shake my head and laugh. It’s a funny and interesting term to me. It’s an absolute truth that if we are born here on earth, at some point, we will die. That’s one of a very short list of things I believe to be “absolute truth”.

Your truth and mine absolutely are not the same, and when large groups of people try to take on each other’s truth, well, they must decide for themselves, is this something I genuinely know to be true? Do I agree with everything these people say and do, and if so, why, if I have not experienced these things and do not know them to be true? Do they make sense? Do they serve my or mankind’s best and highest good? Good questions, all.

I cringe when I mention “My truth” or “speaking your truth” and people laugh and scoff. They just don’t get it. Each one of us has our own list of “truths” that we hold dear, for whatever reason. And because we disagree on what those truths or belief systems are…

War. Murder. Fighting. Cults. Anger. Hatred.

We humans have a bad way of INSISTING that everyone else latches on to our own truth and accepts it as their own. INSISTS. And their heads explode when others do not. I am guilty of this myself.

If I have a truth that I hold dear, something that I know that I know that I know, because of my experiences or things I’ve learned, and even something that has been super hard-fought-for, and someone comes along and scoffs at it, it is angering to me. It is to everyone and anyone, I think.

And I guess the only reason I am writing about this is to 1) get my thoughts down about it and/or 2) to see if anyone else thinks about these kinds of super-deep things. If anyone even bothers with deep thought anymore.

I daresay, most people go through life adopting and adapting to the belief systems that are presented to them. Based on all of the things I’ve talked about here. It’s just what we do.

I want to encourage every single person to begin to think more broadly and openly on these things. To realize that your perspective (or mine) are not the only perspectives that are real.

To accept that other people have different experiences and that it is okay. Your truth and mine can be different, it’s okay. It’s really, really, okay. No need to go to war.

This is one thing I mean when I said in an earlier post that I feel as though I once saw life through a peephole (my limited perspective) and now I see it through a globe-sized hole. I still don’t fully see everything Big Picture, but I desire to do so.

If you grew up in a particular culture and those “truths” are dear to you, or adopted that culture, then I would just say, never forget to try and see things broadly, realize that we are very different and we do not have to be the same or think the same as people who are in or come from other backgrounds and experiences. WE DO NOT have to adapt and adopt other people’s truths. Keep your mind switched on and research and read and figure out for yourself what your truth is, and go ahead and hold it dear. But please stop insisting that everyone believe the same thing, it’s never going to happen and it’s always going to cause divisiveness. 

I guess that is my point and my conclusion. Think. Have compassion. Don’t adopt other’s views blindly. Do the deep work of digging out your own truth, then speak it freely and often. People won’t get it. Who cares?

Have a deep, thoughtful, wonderful, peaceful day.

Peace Out.

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Choose Peace

It’s funny to me that at every stage of my life I have felt as though

I was seeking the right things, doing the right things,

but then when looking back,

it seems so… different.

I suppose it’s due to knowing something now

I didn’t know then.

 

Life really does move like a river,

so that you are never in the same water again.

 

I wish I’d had this Big Love earlier.

I wish I’d had the wisdom of 50 years

at age 20

But doesn’t everyone?

 

I know now that for the world to change

It will take all of us

You and me

Deciding

Wanting it to with all of what we are

And we must sacrifice the god

Of our own opinions and belief systems

At the altar

Of peace.

 

Kindness, dignity, and respect have fallen away

And they are integral to our futures.

We must seek again to find common ground

To focus on what we have in common

Rather than how we are different.

 

Our world is in the midst of major transition

In this age of technology

And some will not change their lens

They will refuse to see the world

As a whole

As one

And for them, nothing will change

 

For those with open minds, open hearts

The world can be a peaceful united place.

 

We choose to live in light or darkness.

We choose strife or peace.

We choose to be critical or to look for commonality.

Every time we meet someone new, we choose.

 

Choose love. Choose peace.

 

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Why Teaching Empathy is Important

Over the last generation or two, we’ve witnessed a downturn in empathy and compassion being taught to our children. Here are my opinions and thoughts on why.

  1. More and more households have two working parents, leaving the largest part of child-rearing to strangers who have no emotional investment in our children. Many believe that both parents must work to get by, but often, (not always), it is not about getting by, but getting ahead. The desire for larger, nicer homes and cars has outweighed our desire to parent our kids.
  2. In some instances, a cycle of abuse and neglect has simply been continued on. If parents know no empathy, they can hardly be expected to teach it to their children.
  3. Faith is not popular these days. Many have found a foundation of moral and ethical, even empathetic and compassionate behavior to be taught in churches. Church attendance and even faith in a higher power has declined, which causes many to choose to have no moral foundation. While it is possible to be an atheist and have a moral compass, it is rarer than one might assume. Once certain lines are no longer drawn, and ethics are now situational, it is so much easier to wander down a path where anything goes, because it is believed there are few consequences to your behavior. If there is no God waiting to smack you down or send you to hell, then it is an easy leap to an “anything goes” lifestyle, for some. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” becomes the mantra.
  4. When one grows up without constant love, acceptance, positive touch, and compassion, one learns to count only on themselves. This leads to a “me first” mentality and a lifestyle of selfish and boorish behavior. Bad behavior becomes the norm. Looking out for number one is the only way some know to live. This is my societal observation. It makes me sad, but I have yet to be proven that any of this is untrue.
  5. As my fifth and final point, I’ll just say, let’s love our children first; put their needs ahead of our own. Too often we have babies having babies and nobody fully understands what it takes to raise a child (well) and into adulthood. Our children aren’t asking to be born; sometimes they are brought into this world as an expression of love, sometimes by accident, or a lack of planning. Even those who are planned and wanted in the beginning face the possibility of a neglectful or abusive upbringing once the parents realize just what it takes to raise a child. If you are not able to (compassionately and lovingly) raise a child for a minimum of eighteen years, (and it does not always stop there), please take steps to make sure you are not going to conceive a child in the first place. They say Hell is for Children, and often that hell is right here on this earth, in a home where they should be loved and cared for. Have empathy, show empathy, teach empathy; this alone will heal our hurting world.